Southwest Poverty Reduction Project

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The principal objectives of the Southwest Poverty Reduction Project are to: 1) demonstrate the effectiveness of a focused, multisectoral rural development project approach to poverty reduction; 2) facilitate a "market-friendly" increase in labor mobility from the poor areas to better-off rural and rapidly growing urban areas; 3) upgrade poverty monitoring at the national and local levels; and 4) significantly reduce absolute poverty in 35 of the very poorest counties in southwestern China. The project will comprise the following six components: 1) social services, including increasing the access and quality of primary education and enhancing the availability and delivery of primary and curative health care; 2) labor mobility, through a voluntary system of enhanced rural labor mobility for the upland absolute poor; 3) rural infrastructure, including the labor-intensive construction of rural roads, safe drinking water supply systems, small-scale irrigation, agricultural drainage works, biogas digesters, and rural electrification; 4) land and farmer development, using menus of crop and livestock activities to increase upland agricultural productivity and reverse the trend of environmental degradation; 5) Township and Village Enterprise (TVE) development, through support for TVEs consisting of investment credit for labor-intensive, mineral, service and handicraft industries; and 6) institution building and poverty monitoring.